


Nightmares

by Misedejem



Category: Bravely Default (Video Game) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Death, Gen, Nightmares, Suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 16:55:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5593819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misedejem/pseuds/Misedejem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the horrific things the party saw and did eventually began to take its toll. After the Holy Pillar was when the nightmares began.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in October 2015

The absence of Til in his nightmares did not equate to the absence of nightmares altogether. Tiz wasn’t entirely sure what was worse: reliving the death of his brother or the twisted apparitions his mind had decided to conjure all of a sudden. A few weeks of blissful sleep, that had been all he was allowed. Did it show? He supposed it must. Edea always had that furrowed brow whenever she handed him his morning cup of coffee, biting her bottom lip as she noted the dark circles under his eyes. Sometimes, when he started awake in a cold sweat in the dead of night, Tiz couldn’t help but notice Ringabel’s eyes twinkling in the moonlight, awake to register the other man’s discomfort. Perhaps Tiz’s unconscious thrashing had wakened him. Perhaps he had troubles sleeping of his own. Ringabel always had dark circles; it was not as unusual for him.

Then there was Agnes, always so dedicated to pressing ahead, stopped in her tracks and suggesting they rest. For his sake. It wasn’t helping. He wasn’t sleeping, despite her concern.

“Is it your brother again?”

No, no of course it wasn’t. It was worse than that, a plethora of dark things that dogged him night after night. Seeing his brother die would be better than that.

At least his death wasn’t repulsive. No gore that brought bile to his throat. Just darkness.

Til was there in spirit, of course. He was in Egil falling free of his grasp in a nightmare world where he hadn’t caught him. A strangled cry that was all too familiar bore into his skull as the lava hissed and the tiny hand disappeared beneath the surface. It wasn’t even a memory, and yet it was there. He recalled the journal Alternis Dim had dropped. Perhaps that had triggered it? The Dark Knight’s recount of plunging into lava had been chilling to say the least. Alternis’ grim foretelling had certainly stirred something in Tiz. It showed as he was forced to watch the salve-maker Qada torture Egil, surreal in the fact that he had previously died in his dreams. Egil squealed, choking on his cries as Tiz tried so desperately to turn his head away. He could not bear it, he couldn’t bear watch this child he had devoted himself to saving in unimaginable agony. Yet his dreams clamped his head in place and he couldn’t tear away. Egil was replaced with Alternis, then with dying soldiers, then with Edea and Agnes and Ringabel. His own pain was immeasurable and he hated himself for seeing it.

Tiz’s heart raced and he tossed and turned as the images faded and he saw his friends die time and time again. A huge, hideous beast he supposed was Airy. Edea screaming herself hoarse as she was enveloped in the Black Mage’s flames. Agnes, crumpling just as Olivia had, dark magic exploding from every orifice. Ringabel collapsing at the crystals and never waking up, no matter how hard Tiz called for him. Orthros, Rusalka, Chaugmar, Gigas Lich, all ripping the lives from his friends in a flash of teeth, a snarl and a scream. All those terribly close shaves were replaced with a dead end. What would have happened if Ouroboros had won? His dreams had fun showing that too.

He saw himself die too. He dreamt that he was falling, falling into the Great Chasm, Til’s face swallowed by darkness as he gasped for breath. He saw Ringabel heaving great sobs over Edea atop the deck of an airship as his vision closed to pinpricks and was snuffed just like that. Strangest of all, he saw an ethereal orange light vanishing from his line of sight and fading into the dark.

‘They’re not real,’ Tiz told himself. His hands were shaking and the china coffee mug clattered against the table. ‘None of those things actually happened. At least not to you.’

Frankly, that was not totally true. Those visions were ghoulish, but they were visions. Then there came a memory. The flash of his sword. Blood. Humans bled an awful lot when the sword they were impaled from was pulled free. The dying figure was drowned in it as the asterisk barrier began to fade away. Tiz could not even listen to the final words. All he could do was watch in horror. The tear-streaked face managed to smile as the harshest of red gushed from the mouth, vivid against the white pallor of the skin. The thud as the body hit the floor, the glazed eyes that stared, unseeing at the floor. Just looking at the others’ faces told him they were going through similar emotions. For so long, they had been so careful. They tried to leave their enemies breathing as they left. The duchy were strong, they could handle a beating.

Whether or not they died once the party had left was irrelevant in Tiz’s dreams. He hadn’t watched them die, and that was why this was so haunting. Before, they had left behind someone on the cusp of death, broken and battered. This time, they were leaving behind corpses.

‘I didn’t mean to kill you!’ Tiz found himself telling the figure in his dreams. ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’

Sorry didn’t bring people back from the dead.

These nightmares, they’d been present since the second world. Only less frequent. Then the rumours began. People who were supposed to be dead started cropping back up. Two, eight, seventeen, twenty. Twenty fights had not ended in somebody losing their life. That didn’t change the fact that he, the shepherd boy from Norende, had killed a man. The guilt was overwhelming. Accident or no, it had happened. He had blood on his hands.

The contrast between reality and nightmare was immense. In reality, he had saved Egil, Edea and Agnes and Ringabel were fine, they had defeated all those monsters. He was a hero, a saviour… He was hope.

That didn’t change the fact that he was a murderer.


End file.
